Wireless networking [was Re: [NCLUG] Re: Sean's Social Hacking]

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2001 at 03:32:35PM -0700, John L. Bass wrote:
>	features like diversity antennas on the AP. The units are
>	PRISM-II chipset, based on the reference design.

I forgot to mention that the Addtron uses Prism-II as well.  The
latest pcmcia-cs versions wvlan_cs driver will run the Prism-II as
well.

>data rates depend on packet size mixes, but are around 2-5mbps for
>802.11b DSSS radios and FHSS 1-2 mbps radios have effective data rates
>well under 700kbps (basically floppy speed). With either technology,

Hmm, not based on what I've seen.  My WebGear cards max out on transfers
at around 135KB/sec -- nearly double 700kbps.

>collisions are costly, and significantly impair performance - the slower
>the data rate, the higher the probability of collisions and the higher
>the cost of a collision, as the number of stations increases.

Except you'd think that a laptop talking to a desktop in AdHoc
mode with a 50KB/sec transfer going on would have plenty of time
to transfer interactive sessions, instead of having 5 to 10 seconds
to wait for your keystrokes to show up.

In most cases the WebGear works fine, but when you load it it sucks.

Sean
-- 
 "I'll thrash you like a Netscape process on a machine with 640K."
                 -- John Shipman, 1998
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python